


Resist much, obey little

by somethingclever



Series: Journeys end in lover's meetings [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: BDSM AU, Fairly Fluffy, Gen, M/M, Period-Typical Sexism, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, as interpreted in a D/s world, with just the lightest tang of angst.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-04-29 20:42:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14480808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingclever/pseuds/somethingclever
Summary: Everyone thought Stevie Rogers looked like a sub, and were suitably horrified to find him as strong a Dominant as his mother. After all, he’d said no to her commands as young as three years old! Even his best friend Bucky didn’t refuse his Dom father until he was six, and Bucky Barnes was a Dom’s Dom.Literally.Title taken from Walt Whitman, 'Leaves of Grass'





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I figured everyone needs a break from the pain that is Infinity War, so let's take this back to the start.

Sarah kissed her son’s downy head- fresh from Saturday bath, ready for Sunday Mass, and cuddled him onto her lap. “Listen to your mother,” she murmured in the old tongue, a comfort to her and him, “And take my protection with you like the sun.” Every night of his life, she said the Commands over him before the rosary – laying down protection over him until he was old enough to protect himself as a Dominant, or as the only defense he would have as a Submissive, until a Dominant took him as their own. 

“No,” Steve chirped, giggling, “No, ma!”

...what on God’s green earth? 

“Let no one harm you,” she continued, and he squirmed to look her square in the eyes, “Nor harm those in your care. Give your respect to those Dominant-“

“No,” he fussed, “Don’t want.”

Oh...

Oh no.

Well. 

Of course, this was her luck, visited on her son. A dominant, at three-years-old. “Stevie, darling,” she said, “If you don’t want it, you need to give it to someone else.”

“Give ‘tection?”

“Yes,” she said, “Give protection.” She held him close, and he let her speak the words over him, content to let her hold him for now.

And if she said three extra rosaries over him, well, what of it?  
It was always the Devil’s guess if Steve would heed Sarah, growing up. She had a strong feeling he only bent that stubborn neck of his to her when he knew she needed him to, and there was no denying that he shrugged her off when he’d a mind to.

Which was nearly always. Lord, preserve them from his temper! But it was true, what she told him- once you start running, they will never let you stop. “That doesn’t mean runnin’ to a fight, Stevie-boy,” she chided him as he wheezed in relative triumph, his hands battered yet again. 

“They were wrong,” he told her, and fair enough.

She did wish he weren’t quite so... himself. But, he wouldn’t be hers if he weren’t.

~  
Bucky found out he could stop Steve completely by accident. In fact, he never quite forgave himself for it, never got over the sick feeling in his gut when his best friend folded under his voice like a sub in a blue picture.

He’d lost his temper, Steve was being his usual sharp-tongued stubborn punk self, and Bucky was smarting over Sister Mary Bridget’s chastising- good little Dominants should not go climbing the side of the privy to get into the second story classroom, nor should they lead their friends astray- and it had been Steve’s idea, anyhow!- (nobody ever believed it was Steve, when he told them it was him they clucked their tongues and called him ‘sweet’ which just made it all worse). He was gonna get it when he got home- get whipped at school, double at home- and he didn’t think it was fair.

His outrage and fear bubbles over and out in his voice when he snapped at Steve, “You go on home and don’t speak to me again! God-damn,” he swore, since there was no one to hear, “Always gettin’ me in trouble, Steve, why don’t you-“

Steve’s face went white as his mama’s shirtfront, and he bowed his head, throat working helplessly, leaving his books lying bound in their strap at Bucky’s feet and heading down the alley.

“Oh, sure,” Bucky shouted after him, angrier still that now Steve decided to listen! “Now you’re chicken!” 

Served Steve right, he thought, but his belly hurt and he felt sick. Why’d he feel so rotten? It was just a whipping, and he’d got plenty of those before. They weren’t nice, but he never felt like this...

Sweet Mary, he was going to puke. What was happening to him? Maybe his lunch had gone off... he staggered home, picking up Steve’s books- he’d take ‘em to him at class tomorrow.  
He was pretty sick by the time he got home. Hot, cold, his bones ached, and he had to stop to throw up his lunch.

He got lucky, his mother took one look at him and put him to bed, and told his father, when he got home, that there was not going to be a second whipping- sick children often misbehaved, George! - and his dad deferred to his sub, but looked at Bucky narrowly.

He couldn’t go to school the next morning, and his mother went out to get Sarah Rogers. She was a nurse, and often helped her neighbors when they were ill.

She examined him thoroughly, and sent his mother into the hallway as she asked him all sorts of very awkward questions he wouldn’t want to answer with a sub in earshot. It was just so... his ears burned.

“James,” she said, “You’ll not be in trouble for this, but laddie, have you a sub?”

“What? No! I’m too young, I don’t even- mama won’t even let us play ‘come over’ at school, and Steve would kill me if I tried!” He wanted to play come over, desperately, command a sub to come across the schoolyard to him, and reward them with a treat saved from his own lunch – plenty of the other Doms did it, but not him, and not Steve. Steve said it wasn’t right, so Bucky didn’t, though he couldn’t see the harm – wasn’t like anybody hurt the subs – but Steve pointed out that it disrupted the subs’ games, and he supposed that would be annoying, if he got a stick of gum or a cookie. 

“That he would,” she said slowly, leaning back, folding her arms and frowning, “But this is Dom fever if I have ever seen it, and you must be close-bonded to feel it so much and-“ she blinked, her fingers tightening on her arms, “James, did you hurt Steve?”  
He shook his head, and looked at Steve’s books beside his bed. “No, we got in trouble and he never catches it from the nuns! So we had a fight, and-“

Sarah stood up and went to his window by the fire escape, sticking her head out and shouting up, “Steven Grant Rogers!” Command thundered in her voice, “Get yourself down here!”

“No!” Steve shouted back, “I won’t!”

His voice rang in Bucky’s head like a bell, and he growled, “Lissen t’yer mother, ya punk!”

And Steve came clattering down the steps, all white-faced and red-eyed. “Steven, is there anything you want to tell James?” Sarah’s hands were on her hips, looking between the boys.  
He shook his head, mutely, “No, mam,” he said.

That... hurt. “Stevie,” he croaked, his throat aching worse now, like he’d drank burning pitch, “What’s wrong? You sick again?” He looked so pale, wrung out, and goddamn it, he’d been so healthy just yesterday! “You walk one block on your own and catch your death! Swear to Go- goodness,” he gulped as Sarah’s hand twitched against her skirts. Mrs. Rogers tolerated no blasphemy in her presence. 

Steve shook his head, mutely. Bucky frowned, reaching out for his friend, worried he was sick too, had caught whatever this was, and he wasn’t as strong as Bucky was, “Talk to me,” he begged, “Stevie, what’s wrong?”

Steve burst into tears, kneeling beside his bed and resting his hands on Bucky’s wrists in supplication, and Mrs. Rogers stepped out of his room as Steve choked out something broken in Gaelic, words tumbling out, “You said not to- to speak to you, Bucky, and I couldn’t say nothin’, like you reached right inside and took my words away, Bucky, please, please don’ do that again, I’ll be good, I promise, I’ll try anyhow, it was my fault and I’m sorry I-“

Oh... fuck. “But... you’re a Dom. Like me.”

Steve stopped speaking, and swayed where he stood, blinking hard and staring at Bucky. “No,” he whispered, panic scrawling across his features as he recoiled and pulled himself up and as square as he could, “Oh, no, no, no, Mam!”  
Sarah sat down and explained to her increasingly overwrought son What was going on- it happened sometimes, but Steve, unsurprisingly, wanted nothing of it- until James asked, quietly, almost wounded, 

“Would it be so bad? To be mine?”

Steve opened his mouth to be sharp, to cut that poor boy to the quick, and then closed it, his hands clutching at his bony knees, and Sarah flinched at how old he looked as he wheezed out a breath, stridor making her heart ache for her son, “No, Bucky,” he said softly, “It wouldn’t be.”

She left them again, knowing that look of triumphant gladness from her own youth. 

Now, to explain to the Barnes...

~

Steve lay in bed that night, staring at the ceiling in the dark, thinking about how yesterday, everything was normal, and now today... today he wasn’t himself anymore, he was somebody else, a sub- he liked subs, had wanted one of his own some day, and now he guessed that wouldn’t happen but...

He knew how he looked in the mirror hanging above the dresser. He should be honest. He wasn’t gonna have a sub of his own someday. This was for the best.

Just one more way he was twisted up and unnatural. And what was Bucky gonna do, anyhow? Well, Steve had heard all the neighbors say it, and the nuns, too, he wasn’t long for this world and usually that made him angry, made him want to fight and prove ‘em wrong, he was gonna be somebody someday, an artist and a Senator, but now, it just made him tired- the window slid open and Bucky slipped in, like always when he heard Steve’s mam leave for the night shift. “Budge over,” he whispered, “I got us a comic book from my cousin this afternoon.”

Steve obliged, and curled up over Bucky’s shoulder, reading in the faint light from the candle end he pulled from under the mattress. Bucky wrapped an arm around him, like always, and didn’t say anything at all about what Steve was to him now.

“I don’t want to,” Steve blurted, “I don’t want to tie the knot with you. Or go to the Priest for any American wedding, either.”

“Pretty sure nobody thinks the Catholics are American except you,” Bucky said wryly.  
“You know what I mean,” Steve growled at him. 

Bucky nodded and looked back at his comic book, “Yeah,” he said, keeping his voice level. He’d known Steve wouldn’t wanna tie to him, though he’d let himself dream about it for the afternoon. He tucked that thought away and smiled at his best friend (his sub, his, his, his everything) and shrugged, “So you don’t gotta. Isn’t like your mam is coming after me with a shotgun. C’mon. Can’t we just... forget about it?”

“Yeah,” Steve nodded, “Stop hogging the blankets. I’m cold.”

“You’re always cold,” Bucky agreed, tucking the blanket edge around him. “I gotta go, but you keep the book.”

“Really?” Steve’s eyes lit up, and Bucky’s entire soul swelled with pride and joy to see that expression. 

“Yes,” he said firmly, “I want you to.”  
~  
They grew up in each other’s pockets, and moved out of their tenement into another, together, and Bucky watched out for Steve as much as he let him. Stubborn Dom that he was- and Steve did well enough, with his art and his inability to take no for an answer. Some months they ate only beans, but it coulda been worse. And sleeping two to a bed, well, it was just good sense, saved coal oil.

Bucky basked in Steve lying in his arms every night. Sometimes it was after he finished with some pretty sub he met at a dancehall (okay, almost every night, a Dom had needs!) and he tried to help Steve get his own subs, though that went poorly- but he did try. And every night he came home to Steve and held him in his sleep.

He was going to Hell, probably, for behaving bonded to one who didn’t want that, but Steve either ignored or didn’t notice or took it as What Bucky said it was, just staying warm... 

And then his papers came. 

Steve tried to volunteer, was turned down at every juncture, and Bucky went to basic training, praying Steve would somehow settle down into something safer for the war effort- he tried to get him in at the news offices, drawing bond posters, but Steve wanted What every Dom wanted- to fight.

Bucky lay in bed beside Steve and planned a last date for them- he’d even gone so far as to pay the subs to play at being good, so he and Steve could... god he was a mess. Steve couldn’t know.

And he ran off at the expo anyhow, and Bucky satisfied two subs on his own and reeled Home desperate for the comfort of Steve’s arms, and- he wasn’t there.

He slunk in late and nestled in against Bucky, and his throat ached and his eyes were hot. He was leaving. And he was never gonna get to- he pulled Steve close, pressed his face to the back of his neck and inhaled deeply. “Buck?”

“Please,” he whispered, “Steve. You have to know, before I go, I can’t leave without-“

Steve rolled over, facing him in the dark, eyes soft and mouth- his bruised mouth looked so appealing that Bucky wanted to taste it, lick the blood from it and- “I love you,” Bucky said, “I’d tie to you if you’d only have me- please, Steve? Before I go?”

Steve shook his head, “I can’t,” he said softly, “Bucky, I can’t, I- they won’t take anybody bonded to a Dom, you know that, and I-“

Rage boiled over him and Bucky snarled, rolling on top of Steve, knees beside his hips and gripping his wrists, “Don’t. Don’t you dare try’n register again.” The command settled over Steve, and Bucky recoiled at what he’d tried to do- and Steve tilted his head back, eyes closing as he accepted it, shivering at the foreign feeling of a command over him. Bucky bit back a groan as Steve took that from him, bowing his own head over his... his tiny, frail world, all ninety-five pounds of it.

“Done trying to register,” Steve said. 

“You still won’t...?” He didn’t have the little-Dom fantasies anymore of holding hands with Steve in the street, their parents wrapping the soft tying strands around their wrists, Steve in the brightest blue (even if he couldn’t see it) and Bucky in green. There wouldn’t be a feast of pasta and roasts and cake and pudding.

There would only be him and Steve.

Steve watched him, and sat up, looking at Bucky as if seeing him for the first time. “I can’t,” he said, “I won’t Widow you, Buck.”

He bowed his head, the strength going out of his shoulders as he went face first into their bedding. Steve pulled him close, and they hadn’t cried together since Steve’s mam died.

“After the war,” Steve whispered, “When you come home. Then. We’ll do it.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Really, Steve? REALLY?

Bucky waited until they were as private as they could get on a military base after his rescue before he rounded on Steve, “What,” he hissed, “The actual fuck are you doing here? I told you- and you promised- and you’re here, you jerk!” Steve was still grinning like the idiot punk he was.  
  
“I got accepted at the expo, so I didn’t have to apply again, so I didn’t lie.”  
  
Bucky swallowed the bile in his throat, the burning anger and the taste of bitterness.

 “Steve,” he said, “You promised.” He blinked back tears, suddenly crushed as everything hit him- Steve was here. Looking like that. A Captain. Captain America.    
  
He was in the middle of a goddamn war and didn’t have the sense to come in outta the rain but he was a commanding officer if he didn’t get court marshalled and shot or if Bucky didn’t go crazy and rip his face off-  
  
“Bucky?” Steve looked worried, and Bucky breathed in, slowly, “You mad?”  
  
“This is just like,” Bucky ground the words out, “Climbin’ the privy walls. All over again.”

Steve put his hands on his hips, a scowl forming, “I don’t see how it’s that way at all.”  
  
“No?” Bucky shook his head. “No, I guess you wouldn’t.”  He pulled himself upright again- he’d have to go to his billet. Get some food. Maybe pretend to see a medic.  
  
“Bucky? Where are you going?”  
  
“You’re an officer. These are officer’s quarters. I’m a sergeant, and I can’t be here.” God help him, his boy was a moron. And a punk. 

  
“Yes you can, you can stay with me, I don’t mind-“  
  
“Pretty sure,” Bucky said with a helpless smile (he still loved him, even when he was so angry he couldn’t touch him), “The US army would have issues with that.”  
  
“They can stuff it.”  
  
“Steve. No. I’m not staying.” He stomped out before Steve could say anything else, spinning around halfway to salute that fucking  _asshole_ , and watch his face fall like he’d hit him.

So, the US military was a cluster fuck. What else was new? They gave Steve a unit. Let him pick his men. And of course, Steve picked him and Bucky elected to ignore the ride home he was allowed. There was nothing there for him anyhow, not with his everything here.  
  
Steve was pissed at him, which was fine, Bucky was pissed right back! This was bullshit, giving a green officer a group of experienced, bonded men and pointing him at trouble. Did they want him to fail?  
  
Well, screw them. Wasn’t happening.  
  
Bucky shouldered and snarled and coaxed and cossetted his unit into line, behind Captain America.  It didn’t take them long to realize Bucky’s faith wasn’t misplaced, for them to be just as fierce in their loyalty as he was.  
  
Missions were fine. Missions were good. Downtime in camp or back in London on leave...  
  
He half-heartedly made passes at subs. Didn’t much mean anything by it, was too heartsick to be with them, too worn out, too.... He glared at the treacherous beer that wasn’t even getting him buzzed.  Goddamn bastard Hydra Nazis making him a goddamn freak, and not good, like Steve. He was like that... that thing. They’d made him a monster.  
  
He could feel it in his skin.   
  
*  
Steve had had plenty of time to think about Bucky, about promises made in the dark, about how much he’d hated submitting to him at first and then came to crave it in all the little ways Bucky gave to him, held him, comforted him- and now he was healthy and strong and not as ugly as he’d been, he could be Bucky’s for real and feel he wasn’t dragging him down, but now...  
  
Buck didn’t want him. Couldn’t look at him. Was polite, which was an insult.  
  
It hurt.  
  
But there was a war going on, he was a Captain, and all he’d ever wanted was in his hands, and all he wanted now was to put those hands in Bucky’s, let him take some of that weight from him.  He was a Dominant, never doubted it, but with Bucky, he could...

Let go a little.

Steve knew, in his bones, that Bucky still wanted him. He knew, because even with a face like he’d eaten over-soured cabbage, Bucky still gave him gifts, still did any unpleasant chore that might have fallen to Steve, still watched him with hooded eyes and more often than not, ensured Steve somehow got a double portion of food. Even with rationing on.  
  
Steve laid in bed, alone, in a bombed out barn in Normandy, and decided it was time for a gift of his own.  He had found what he was looking for and bought it on their last leave, and ran it through his fingers in the dark, or in his pocket when nobody was watching him.    
  
It wasn’t new, what with rationing, but it was beautiful. He wouldn’t have been able to buy it back home, not something so... he closed his hand around the silk tying cord, rubbed the end between his fingers and closed his eyes.  
  
Bucky was beside him when he woke up, his rifle over his knees and his chin against his chest.  He wasn’t sleeping, and Steve could shake him for being a fool- Steve could take care of himself, dammit! And he’d just opened his mouth to say so when Jones sighed from where he was standing at the top of the stairs to the loft, peering out through the window, “Just kiss, you two.”  
  
Bucky snarled at Gabe, who didn’t look impressed. Denier snorted from her place in the hay rick- she’d won the draw again- and said a terse, sharp, “Oui.”  
  
...what?  
  
“You will be respectful, or-“  
  
“You really think,” Dugan sat up, looking cranky, “That we’d care? God’s sake, Sarge! We won’t respect him less, we have met Carter!”  
  
“More to the point, we know him. And you. And you’re getting sick over him, and he sure needs you like the French need wine, and there’s a war going on-“ Bucky looked stricken at that, standing from his place and walking out of the barn.  
  
“Okay,” Steve broke in, “As you were. Leave him alone.” And then he went after him, because how could he not?

Bucky wouldn’t look at him, and Steve sighed, coming to stand beside him, eyes restless on the horizon. “It’s beautiful here.”  
  
“You would see it,” Bucky said, and Steve nodded, dropping his head.   
  
Now or never, he thought, and never chilled him to his bones.  “Kinda thought,” he said softly, “That I... want you to ask me again.”  
  
Bucky frowned at him, head tilting. “Ask what?”  
  
Steve wasn’t scared of anything, not anymore, but his breath caught like asthma still closed his lungs, and he pulled the tying cord from his pocket, offered it to Bucky on his palm, wrist up like a sub’s should be (he’d learned from all the chorus subs) and the gold woven into the cord glinted.  
  
“Steve?”  
  
“Please, Buck,” Steve said, “I’d rather... with you... than anything, anybody, without you. I can’t wait to go home. I can’t wait for you anymore.”

The cord was beautiful, and Bucky wanted to see it around his wrist, twist it around Steve’s hand, tie them together... his eyes stung as he looked at Steve’s face, up into his eyes, and saw the naked desire there.   
“Oh, Stevie, my boy,” he said as softly as he still could, and he was selfish as he reached out and covered Steve’s hand with his, using his other hand to take the ends of the cord, wrapping them around and around, pulling Steve into him and kissing him softly. “Will you be mine?”   
  
“Always been yours, Bucky.  Probably- fair warning- going to be terrible, but-“  
  
“Ah-ah, no,” Bucky corrected him, “You’ve always been perfect for me.”  
  
“I’m... I’m sorry I misled you. About joining up.”  
  
God bless him, but Bucky had needed that, “I think you’re just sorry I’m upset,” he said wryly, “You’re right where you want to be, aren’t you?”  
  
“Yes,” Steve admitted.   
  
“And if we did this,” he squeezed Steve’s wrist, “And I told you to go home?”  
  
“You wouldn’t,” Steve said, “Because you know what that would do to me, and you love me too much.”  
  
Little bastard was right. “Maybe I love you enough to hurt you a little to save your life.”  
  
Steve swallowed, looking down at their hands. “Even then,” he said, finally, “Even then, I think... I think I would still love you. But please, Buck. Let me?”  
  
“I would never stop you,” Bucky bent his head to kiss the back of Steve’s hand, heard him suck in a gasp. “And I will always love you. If you give yourself to me today, I will keep what you’ve given as my most precious treasure,” he said the words softly, “Will you give it?”  
  
“I do,” Steve repeated back, “I will be a treasure to you, and no others. Will you take me?”  
  
“I do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you've enjoyed! I hope I can manage another chapter in this 'verse. Thanks to my beta, NotTheBabadook for sanity and grammar checking me!  
> Comments are love, and give me impetus to continue writing!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Closing the loop- end of arc one.

That was that  ― they were bonded, the Howlies nudged each other, grinning, and nobody said a word  ― not even Phillips, though he looked long and hard at the submissive cord knotted around Steve’s wrist. Steve and Bucky’s bedrolls were put together, they shared a tent, and when they were back at HQ, Steve would summon his sargeant to his quarters for tactical discussions.

Tactics were certainly discussed, in depth and detail, with Steve’s head against Bucky’s knee and Bucky’s hand around the back of his neck like a collar. 

Bucky despaired of his bondmate ever getting a natural consequence in his life that wasn’t an asthma attack.  

^

Peggy sat with Steve, quiet and calm, after Bucky ― after his ― after. 

God, he didn’t want this  _ after. _

Her gentle, cool, clever little fingers took his hand and held it, and he sobbed helplessly as she untied Bucky’s knot from his wrist, undoing the firm loops and twists. She settled the band again on his wrist, flat and hideous, unadorned except the simple, flat, hard knot of submissive’s grief.

He wanted to tear it off, redo Bucky’s work, take him back for himself, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t dishonor his loss like that.  He couldn’t.

He cried, keened the way his mother had for his father, and longed fiercely for the heartbreak she had told him could kill.

But, the serum had fixed his heart, and it kept beating, and beating, and hurt more than any beating ever had, ever would. 

What couldn’t be changed had to be borne.

He could not bear it. God, he could not ―

 

*

“It’s my choice, Peg,” Steve said as he took the controls, pushing them down, down, down. “He made his choice, I made mine, and ― ”

“He would kill you for this, you bastard,” she sobbed over the line, “I- Steve. When you see Barnes, make him take you dancing, my dear.”

“I will,” he said. “We’ll go on a real swell date. I’ll let him treat me.”

“He’ll love that,” she told him, and he smiled and closed his eyes, clinging to his cord, knowing he’d have his ties back, after, when...  He would go home.

He’d get him back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you've enjoyed! Part two of this story will be posted shortly - pairing will be Steve/Tony. Part three is in the works currently, when Bucky returns for his boy! Stay tuned.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! I've never posted in this type of 'verse (although I have written it extensively for my own enjoyment), and I hope to have a second and third part of this work soon.
> 
> I’ve had two lovely betas- NottheBabadook and FreyaS. Thank you both! Any remaining errors are mine and my cellphone’s.  
> Comments give me life.


End file.
